George Mohler is a crime-fighting, math professor superhero — not that he’d ever call himself that.

First he’ll point out it’s “assistant professor,” first year at Santa Clara University. Next, he’ll go into some detail about how his computer program that uses past crime data to predict when and where future crimes will be attempted is not exactly mathematics.

Which is not to say he isn’t delighted by the attention his work with crime-curbing algorithms has been attracting (newspaper stories, academic papers, conference talks). After all, it isn’t every day that algorithms stir up much of a fuss, unless you’re Google (GOOG).

“To be honest I never really imagined that this is where I’d end up,” says Mohler, 29, meaning not the Peet’s near campus, but as the it guy in the emerging crime-fighting field known as predictive policing.

“I think it’s brilliant,” says Zach Friend, the Santa Cruz Police Department’s crime analyst. Santa Cruz is the first department to deploy Mohler’s program. Los Angeles is planning to incorporate the system into its crime prevention efforts, and both Mohler and Friend say they’ve heard from other departments that are interested.

Santa Cruz has been using Mohler’s program only long enough to know it’s very promising. In the first few weeks, officers have seen a high correlation between when and where the program says a certain type of property crime — burglary, car break-ins or auto theft — will occur and reports of that crime being tried or committed, Friend says. It will be months, he adds, before crime-fighters in Surf City will be able to determine its overall effectiveness.

But more important for now is what Mohler’s work has to say to every school kid struggling with math and wondering what possible use there could ever be for all this number crunching.

In a valley of curious minds, Mohler shows just where those minds can lead us. This all started for him at UC Santa Barbara when he was tinkering with computer programs that might help those working with plastics and other materials create better products. It was a heady mix of polynomials and polymers. (A little math humor there.) Then onto UCLA, his stop before Santa Clara, where he joined a team studying crime patterns in Los Angeles.

Mohler started noodling around with notions of how to spot patterns in seemingly random events. You know, like earthquakes. And bingo. What happens when a sizable earthquake hits an area? Aftershocks.

And it turns out that when one house on a street is burglarized, it’s not unusual for nearby houses — or even the same house — to be hit later. It seems burglars, like most of us, hate long commutes. They prefer to strike near home, which is one reason for follow-on crime in a given neighborhood, Mohler says.

“You can see it,” he says of the crime data he’s crunched, “especially property crimes.”

Mohler began searching for studies covering earthquake prediction models, which have been around for years. “Google is an invaluable tool.” (Love those algorithms.) He read and pondered and sought help from fellow academics. He determined that the principles behind earthquake prediction could be tweaked and applied to crime.

Mohler’s model, which relies on years of crime data, now provides Santa Cruz with a dynamic tool that constantly changes as crimes are committed in different parts of the city. Officers review the predictions regularly. They make it a point to pass through trouble spots when they are not busy with other calls.

Mohler’s timing couldn’t have been better. As he was toiling away, many police departments statewide were slashing budgets, trimming the number of officers and looking for ways to keep everyone safe with fewer cops. Mohler, whose research is supported by federal grants, is not charging departments for his work.

“We are faced with a reality that we will not see more officers coming into our agency, or agencies throughout the state, anytime soon,” says Friend, who last year read mention of Mohler’s project in the Los Angeles Times and shot him an email. “We need resources, but if that’s not a reality we have to start leveraging technology in a way that makes us more efficient.”

Which means that Mohler’s work might be only the beginning for crime-fighting math professor superheroes everywhere.

Contact Mike Cassidy at mcassidy@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5536. Follow him at Twitter.com/mikecassidy.

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